I must say that I found this interview a bit annoying.

I respect OpenBSD's commitment to security and code audit, but in the meantime I have to produce code and I have deadlines for that, most of us have.

I guess Perl itself can be described as "good enough", it is full of bugs, just watch p5p (or take a look at the archive), so what? Should we not use it?

And before writing a script in Perl that uses CGI, DBI and XML::Parser, something not unheard of, I should know all about all their interfaces? Plus of course the DBD(s) I am using and probably have a look at the code of Expat, not to mention Illya's regexp engine? I am sorry, but that's not the way it works. I read the docs, figure out what I'm interested in in, look around for examples (yes, examples!), and advice on using the modules, design the software and... start coding. While coding I will make mistakes and learn more about the modules. And at some point, long before the code is perfect, I will have to deliver it. And the next time I have to write a similar program I'll do a better job. That's called learning on the job and frankly I can't see any ways around it

I would _love_ to have enough time to produce perfect code all the time, but who does? I have even been told that books, yes even those written by pretty good coders, usually need errata.

I try to do my best and produce the best code I can given the usual constraints of time, (my usually poor) knowledge and environment.

So I find the contempt for "most programmers" that I read in this interview more than a tad irritating.

It won't prevent me from sleeping at night though...

In reply to Re: Words from Theo de Raadt by mirod
in thread Words from Theo de Raadt by Petruchio

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